


i tiresias (have foresuffered all)

by ThatWeirdGuyInTheBushes



Category: The Umbrella Academy (TV)
Genre: Angst, Angst with a Happy Ending, Body Dysphoria, Character Study, Coffee, F/M, Gen, Grief/Mourning, Implied/Referenced Character Death, Implied/Referenced Child Abuse, Kinda, Non-Linear Narrative, Number Five | The Boy Has Issues, Number Five | The Boy-centric, Reginald Hargreeves' A+ Parenting, Smoking, Talk of murder, cause five, im probably mis-remembering things but i dont give a shit i need to rant about five okay, kind of, no beta we die like men, season two
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2020-08-11
Updated: 2020-08-11
Packaged: 2021-03-05 19:01:41
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,696
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/25850266
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/ThatWeirdGuyInTheBushes/pseuds/ThatWeirdGuyInTheBushes
Summary: Five misses sharing his birthday, but Five has missed a lot of things.alternatively; number five, coffee, and the art of taking back.
Relationships: Dolores/Number Five | The Boy (Umbrella Academy), Number Five | The Boy & The Hargreeves (Umbrella Academy), Number Five | The Boy & Vanya Hargreeves, Number Five | The Boy (Umbrella Academy) & Everyone, Vanya Hargreeves/Sissy
Comments: 27
Kudos: 365





	i tiresias (have foresuffered all)

**Author's Note:**

> I should be working on Then Spoke the Thunder but I watched season two in one day so I had to make this.
> 
> the title is from the wasteland because if it's not clear yet i have an unhealthy obsession with ts eliot.

Number Five is not a good name.

His mother tried to give him something different, but Five is not his siblings. He doesn't need a new one, not when the one he has fits just fine.

And he will admit, if only to himself, that he likes the idea of being the only Number Five in the world. He has to share a birthday and a father and a house with his siblings but his name will always be his.

Number Five is not a good name, but it does not belong to anyone else, and that is the important part.

-

He wants to share a birthday again.

Five doesn't remember how old he is. He'd have to check his notebook, the one where he's marking down the days (He doesn't have space in his head to remember something so trivial), and he's too tired to do that right now. He's trying to go to bed and he's got Delores in his arms and all he can think about is how much he misses sharing a cake made by his robot mom with six idiots who all took bigger slices than him.

He checks the notebook again and remembers that he's going to be forty-five in two weeks.

And then he's sobbing into Dolores chest because it's been so long and he still can't stop aching.

-

Five's siblings don't feel right.

Maybe that's just a him problem, because he was gone and stuck in hell while they all grew up or died or whatever but he's still used to them being kids.

He reconciles with himself that he doesn't have to stop treating them like kids, because he's nearly thirty years older than all of them.

It's still weird to see Vanya smoke, though.

"Those things will kill you, y'know," he tells her, sometime before the first end of the world.

She looks at him strangely, and he kind of gets the irony. He does stuff that might kill him all the time. But he doesn't like the idea of the slow death, the hospital beds and the heart monitors. If he dies, he'll die gunfire and sunlight, none of that cancer or old age or surrounded by loved ones shit.

(He used to wield that thought like a shield, when he killed people. He was doing them a favour. No one _really_ wanted to die old and decrepit. But then he thinks about Ben, who died young and daytime, and he can't help but not exactly believe it anymore.)

"I know," she replies, "but it helps with the anxiety and shit, so..."

The swearing. He's never going to get used to the swearing, either.

-

He hates this body. He hates having to tilt his head back to look people in the eye, he hates the scrawny bones without any of the muscle he worked so hard for. He hates how he's the oldest sibling but no one ever treats him like it.

And he didn't think he'd miss his scars but he does.

He had a collection going, in a way. A portfolio of bullets and knives and falling debris all over his body. He was a supremely fucked up museum of dumb luck and skill and survival and he'll be damned if he doesn't want it back. The skin on his upper arm is different, only acne where there should be a wrinkled burn scar, and his fingers have callouses from pens instead of gun handles. It's all wrong and safe and so achingly thirteen.

His body felt so _right_ and it just doesn't anymore.

(He wonders if this is how Luther feels, this trapped-incorrectness. But empathy is murky waters, and he hasn't survived this long by being willing to tread them.)

-

The only good thing about the Handler was her appreciation for coffee. She stocked up on the exotic shit and sometimes sent him some if she was feeling generous.

Everything else about her was detestable, but her taste in coffee was magnificent.

Reginald Hargreeves did not like coffee, but Reginald Hargreeves did not like a lot of things, so none of his children have ever cared much.

Every morning, Five sits back in his father's chair and drinks his coffee, and he stores his favourite grounds in his father's desk, and he doesn't use a coaster for his mug so there are stain marks everywhere and it's so tiny an act but it feels so good. And he thinks it might make him understand what Klaus means when he scatters gay slurs around his speech and then rambles on for hours about reclamation, because this tastes like that, like grabbing something from his fathers hands and saying "Look at me, look at what I'm holding; You took it from me and then I took it from you and you're never going to have it again."

Or maybe he's just an old man, sitting in his dead dad's shitty chair and soliloquizing about a plain cup of coffee.

That's also an option.

-

He fucks it up, again.

He ended the world, again.

He's not even surprised at this point, if he's honest. Ruining everything is kind of the family business.

-

He misses Dolores. He's laying down on a roof top, clutching his shirt like it can keep him tethered to Earth, and he's just watched Hazel die and he's just watched his family die (again) and all he can think about is how much he wants his fucking wife back.

He almost cries, laying there. He doesn't, but he almost does. Dolores is a scooped out, raw part of him, a hole with teeth that bites him when he gets too close. And he wants her, in his stomach and his heart and his bones, and he knows she's probably happier back where she belongs but that doesn't help how much he wants her back.

(He almost starts to wonder if this is how Klaus feels, but he can't see the bottom of empathy, and he won't know if there are sharks until he's bit.)

-

Diego should not be able to surprise him anymore.

He can't help it, though.

But he's watching those guards pull him away and he can't help but feel like he lost something big while he was in the apocalypse. Because before his siblings died they grew up. They got older and they moved out and they all got supreme daddy issues and fucked up coping mechanisms. And he's always known that it happened but he's only really processing it right now. And it's another ache in a long list of them, curling up inside him.

He doesn't have time to dwell on it, but even as he shoves it aside he can't shove it _away._

He missed so many things.

-

He hasn't slept once in the Sixties, which would be important if there weren't other things to deal with.

-

He takes back the one nice thing he said about the Handler. Her taste in coffee is fucking atrocious. He knows that it's not but he refuses to have any good thoughts about her anymore.

-

He's covered in blood and he's still mad about the vending machine. He doesn't want to focus on the blood or the ax in his hands or the room full of so much death he can hardly breathe so he's going to focus on the vending machine.

He gets back to the Handler and he gets the brief case and he needs this to work more than he's needed anything else all week.

-

He hates his family.

-

Vanya wants to bring a girl and her kid with them, because Vanya is a love sick idiot, just like everyone else in Five's stupid fucking family.

(A little part of him he doesn't want to think about is jealous.)

-

His head hurts and Vanya almost kills everyone again, but she doesn't, so it's fine. And then they're going to her girlfriends farm house for some reason that Five can't even fucking remember anymore.

He watches her hold the blond girls hand and he can't help but want to go up and tap her on the shoulder and warn her. Watches them kiss and talk about the kid and can't help but want to say "Those things will kill you, y'know."

But then the Handler shows up with her daughter, who likes Diego and wants to kill Five and also has an army at her back. Then Vanya kills everyone and then the Handler's daughter almost kills everyone and his head still hurts and he's still kind of mad about the vending machine.

-

Five's family is dead, again. He's choking on dust and blood and somewhere in the back of his mind a little voice is sneering. "This is what you wanted, right? You got your sunshine and your quick deaths, so why don't you just lay back and take what you're given?"

But he doesn't want his family to die here. They're too good for that.

And he does't want to die here, either. Desperately, tears burning in his eyes, deep in his bones, he doesn't want to die here. And for some reason, the thing that pushes him over the edge is that he really wants to meet his niece.

-

He turns back time, and he finally does it right.

Diego's giving his speech to the girl who Five orphaned, and the Handler bursts in, and she finally dies. Finally, finally, finally.

He spits on her corpse, and that tastes a bit like reclamation, too.

They gather outside the house with the brief case, ready to go back, all holding hands, and that little sneering voice pops up in Five's head again. "Those things will kill you, y'know."

 _I know,_ Five thinks. And he's a little bit at peace with that thought, because they've saved the world and they've got a bit more time together and he's going to meet his niece. And he's time traveled a lot but those aren't things he's ever done before.

And it's a new, weird kind of ache, making itself a home next to all the others, but he likes the idea of having something to look forward to.

**Author's Note:**

> comment to give my cat the ability to speak.


End file.
